Dancing in redundant spaces ...

Ownership of Spaces: What makes a space a place? What makes a place a non-place?

Through my dance practice, I am currently investigating how Contact Improvisation Dance, or the self-regulatory movement discipline of Authentic Movement (or, indeed, any kind of 'formal' movement) may be sufficient or appropriate to the task of activating or temporarily at least, creating a sense of ownership which is missing from a given place - or 'non-place'.* (By 'ownership', I do not mean ownership in the legal sense. I mean ownership through energetic presence - in the space).

At this point I am engaging with small, subtle, yet not-everyday movements and filming public responses, in places which could be thought of as interfaces between places and non-places: service entrances at the back of supermarkets and on the edge of busy thoroughfares full of people; carparks, entrances and corners of shopping malls, inter-street linking passageways ... the Interislander ferry, airports ...

* 'Non-place': Marc Augé coined this term in 2000, in his definitive book, 'non-places. introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity'. He uses it to describe how our ability to 'be' fully present and 'be-long' in this kind of location in our world, atrophys or contracts when we are in locations - specifically, non-places, like supermarkets, airports, service stations and forecourts - places of transit, where we - some of us in particular - expend much of our time and energy displacing space in a cursory manner, without emotional investment.

I welcome all comments on this topic.


Augé, M. (2000). non-places introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity / Marc Augê translated by John Howe. Verso, London / New York.

slow roll 1 Nelson, NZ Aotearoa. February. 2007

In the Company of Strangers

I am carrying out my MA in dance and film and I am investigating the possible dramas inherent in those moments of perception 'slippage' when we notice, fleetingly, something incongruous or perhaps uncanny/out of the rhythm of our current activity/task, occurring just at the edge of our attention - and failing to follow it up we wonder, perhaps only later, about what it was we had witnessed. What was that?

If you are able to document any of these moments in any way, through writing, drawing, photos, sound or film, I would be very interested. Please post writing or links to other media in the Comments section.